As soon as she could get a job at age 16, Lorraine Delgado started working and quickly became self-sufficient. By age 23 she had moved into a retail management position and was making more than she ever could have imagined.

Ten years later, Delgado thought she had it all — a baby girl on the way and an annual salary of $55,000 a year — a real coup for someone without a high school diploma.

However, her world quickly turned upside down and due to pregnancy-related health concerns she found herself unemployed, unable to afford her apartment and moving back to Midland. Lacking the finances to pay for her own residence, Delgado, then 33, was considered homeless according to the McKinney-Vento Act, which concludes that any individual or family living in a hotel/motel, in a car, on the street, or with friends or family but unable to pay the rent or mortgage is homeless.

Delgado’s situation isn’t unique.

The majority of homeless individuals in Midland are not the stereotypical homeless, said Tom Miller, executive director of Family Promise of Midland, which aims to bring homeless families to financial independence and a stable living situation.

“The stereotypes and the generalizations are that people in poverty are lazy, they don’t work, they want to live off the government, when in fact the majority of people in poverty are working, many of them two and three jobs to make ends meet,” Miller said. “But they’re still below the national poverty threshold based on their wages and/or family size.”

Homelessness has a different face today, said Nicole Wiseman, Family Promise case manager.

“People don’t think that their local waitress or local mechanic is struggling to feed their family at night and that they’re the ones going to the soup kitchens,” Wiseman said.

By accepting help from Family Promise, Delgado has gained a second chance at self-sufficiency for her family.

THE FACE OF HOMELESSNESS

Delgado had a good job as a general manager at Ross in Arlington, making higher wages than she expected at age 23. She didn’t grow up with much and her income allowed her to splurge frequently, without thinking about saving. She was single, she loved her job and thrived under the pressure of being a trouble-shooter and manager for a large company.

When she was 33, she became pregnant with her daughter, Solara, who is now 3. The pregnancy was a blessing, but due to the constant stress of her job, Delgado’s health declined and doctors told her the pregnancy was high-risk. So, she resigned from Ross and relocated back to Midland with her family.

“I wanted to go to school (when I returned home), but unfortunately because of my health I couldn’t do all that,” Delgado said. “It was going to be too strenuous, and my doctor wanted me to just relax through my pregnancy so there’d be no complications. So with all that, I had to let go of an apartment. I had my vehicle and all this stuff and unfortunately I couldn’t pay for it. Being that I’m a single parent I knew I wouldn’t go back to Ross. I didn’t want to burden anyone else, but I didn’t want to lose that connection with my daughter when she was born.”

When Delgado left her job and lost her apartment, she was forced to apply for government assistance and move in with her mother.

“I went through a big depression during my pregnancy because I was so used to being independent,” Delgado said. “I had an income, I had had an income since I was 16 years old. So here I am pregnant, dependent on my family. I’m losing my car, now I’ve accrued property debt and I’m thinking my world is over.”

Delgado’s depression consumed her. She lost weight and stopped taking good care of herself. When her doctor told her that if she continued down this path, she’d lose Solara, she knew she had to make a drastic change.

“It was like a switch,” Delgado said. “I embraced my pregnancy, I started doing right by it, and I started looking to see how am I gonna improve.”

She got a job as a receptionist at Salvation Army making $7.25 an hour, which was a humbling experience after her leadership role at Ross. Through her new position at Salvation Army, Delgado learned about Family Promise.

“I wanted to start getting on a plan where I could start paying off old debt and become self-sufficient again,” Delgado said. “But it ended up being very hard — harder than I thought — to do it on my own.”

It was hard for Delgado to let go of her pride and admit that she couldn’t attain her goal of financial independence without extra help.

She gave Family Promise a call and inquired about their program.

When she was accepted, she started off in the Interfaith Hospitality Network, in which clients use Family Promise’s day center as a home base for their personal belongings and where they shower and prepare for school or work each morning. Each week, a different local congregation hosts the families overnight.

“I went from a person who said I would never even think about this, or I would never have to ask for government assistance,” Delgado said. “I mean very prideful to getting the assistance and living in a program for homeless families. Living at churches with my daughter, not caring. I’m not caring what kind of purse I have, I’m not caring what kind of shoes. So it was a dramatic change for me as an individual. Very humbling.”

After more than 100 days in the IHN program, where she saved 8 percent of her income to pay off debts and establish a savings account, Delgado graduated to the second level of Family Promise: the Families Forward Transitional Housing Program.

She and Solara moved to transitional housing, where she currently resides. Her credit has recovered to a point where she could

potentially purchase her own home within the next few years. She recently acquired a salaried position as a front office administrator at the new Excel Emergency Room. Things are certainly looking up.

On a rainy October evening, Delgado spoke in her Family Promise apartment while Solara played with a kitchen set in her room. She was waiting to make dinner before going to church at 7 p.m. “I really don’t have a whole lot going,” Delgado said, laughing. “It’s me and my daughter, family, church. ... In the future I hope to be married and maybe even have another baby. A year and a half ago I made a commitment to myself and to my daughter to do the best I can with what I have. I am very thankful and I am blessed.

“If someone is determined and they really want to change, they can do whatever they have to do for the sake of their child or for

themselves. It’s doable,” Delgado said.

BREAKING THE CYCLE OF POVERTY

With the help of a grant from United Way of Midland, Family Promise has expanded from serving four families through IHN to 10 families with the transitional housing program.

What makes the Family Promise program so successful is that it places high value on case management. By putting more effort into each family through goal-setting, study groups, financial counseling and more, the generational cycle of poverty is more likely to be broken, Miller said.

“Case management, to truly make a difference, has to be intensive, concentrated, targeted, and it takes a lot of effort on a small-scale basis,” Miller said. “There’s no way we could provide case management to 100 people and be effective. We could put a Band-Aid on it maybe, but it would take way more resources than what we have to be able to do that.”

The majority of Family Promise’s clients come from generational poverty, not situational poverty, he said.

“It’s like a ravine that they’ve got to get over because if they’re not able to go from receiving benefits to independence, then they’re gonna fall in there and they’re gonna struggle and go back to receiving those benefits,” Miller said. “So what we look at is how do we prepare the family to jump over that and never return? Basically, through higher employment, higher wages and increasing their education.”

Delgado never finished high school, but she is now on her way to getting her GED, which is a requirement of the Family Promise program. Then she will start attending college classes so she can eventually have a higher-paying career in a field of her choice, she said. This journey has certainly changed her.

“I believe in getting up and working for what you want and being responsible,” Delgado said. “But this time frame in my life I didn’t have any choice but to seek out the help and accept the help because nobody else could take care of me financially. I had to do what I had to do. So I had to just suck it up and God showed me some things in my life, telling me not to be so prideful. It’s not just about you anymore. Just do it.”

If Delgado achieves full financial stability, her daughter’s chances of becoming a successful adult skyrocket, studies show. Parents are crucial to children’s healthy development and to families’ ability to move out of poverty. Delgado said she had to become less prideful to get where she is today but, in reality, she was prouder in the most positive sense of the word.

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Through the goal-setting process Family Promise case management does for each of its clients, Delgado was able to get off any kind of government assistance a year ago.

“Because of Family Promise’s help and support I didn’t need food stamps anymore,” Delgado said. “That was one of my goals. So I was ecstatic. I struggle, but not to the point where I’m not gonna be able to feed my child. The savings that I have … I know that I have something. I know my daughter’s not gonna starve; I’m not gonna run out of gas, and that is a wonderful feeling.”